cliches and strawberry shampoo
by zorrie
Summary: There is no rhythm to anything that they do, and there never has been, but in an awkward shuffle of sharp elbows they somehow end up with their noses inches away and Matt grabs Mello’s hip and they both freeze, waiting.


sorry for the strange title, but i am title impaired and tired. but the fact that you're reading this means it was at least intriguing, right?

there's really no plot, nor rhyme nor reason, other than that i was bored and wrote fluff. 'cos i love these two, and yeah. Wammy's-House-era, and an almost-first-kiss. sorry for the rampant cliches, i just couldn't get them out of my head o_O

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"And you wanted?" Mello asks, archly, but Matt can see flickering uncertainty for a moment, so subtle he nearly doubts it himself. The fingers of Mello's other hand, the one not currently at his mouth with its nails being gnawed in lieu of a bar of chocolate, curl into the waistband of his pants. He stands up straighter. If it's possible. Matt doesn't think he's ever seen Mello slouch, not once. For Matt the posture is habitual, but he chalks it up to a side effect of compulsively playing his DS, hunkering down in the back of classrooms to peer at its screen beneath desks.

"Nothing much," Matt begins, a thousand scenarios reeling through his mind. An apathetic observation that his window of opportunity for fibbing is shrinking fast twines idly through his train of thought, but Matt swallows once and raises his chin defiantly. He meets Mello's eyes and wonders when they got so blue, and the dry tang of fear is bitter in his mouth.

"No, you wouldn't have pulled me down here for nothing much," Mello asserts, a crease in his forehead saying _I know you_ and _don't try to lie_, reassurance and threat both at once. Matt smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes.

"Yeah."

_Don't put all your eggs in once basket_, Matt thinks, but he's _bitten_ _off more than he can chew_ and Mello gives him a look, that look, the look that pulls Matt's stomach in ten different directions and the younger boy realises he's _up shit creek without a paddle_.

Mello huffs melodramatically in annoyance, more for the benefit of the image he's cultivating than anything else – lately Mello's become concerned with his appearance, and Matt would find it funny if he didn't find himself suddenly driven to distraction by little things like the way light bounces off Mello's hair when he brushes it, and the way Mello's taken to practicing _devil-may-care_ smirks (and they make Matt feel utterly strange, partly unsettled but partly something else, too) as if nobody is good enough to _be the scum on his shoes_ – because Mello, Matt thinks, wants to look nice, but he also wants to be taken seriously.

Matt thinks about Mello with the tip of his tongue sticking out between his teeth as he concentrates on painting the nails of his right hand, and when Matt says he's gone girly shooting back _Want me to slap the taste out of your mouth?_ but rolling his eyes to take away the sting. And Matt thinks that it's a shame Mello thinks he needs to impress the whole world, even though Mello swears he doesn't care. Matt wonders whether Mello realises what he's doing, himself. All the bravado, so unnecessary when Mello has always been the most dynamic of then all.

Mello, tired of watching Matt stand there and think without sharing, waves a hand in front of his face.

"Earth to Matt," Mello drawls.

And Matt stands there, mute because his mind's gone on vacancy and Mello just took a step closer, peering anxiously into his friend's eyes as though there's something written on Matt's face that Matt can't see. And Mello's giving him that other look, the rarest of all, where his face isn't shuttered by incipient boredom or schooled into superiority. The look that Mello almost never shows to anyone because it's confusion, and Mello would die before letting on that there's something he doesn't know, and it's concern, and Mello's too proud, especially these days, to admit there's anything he gives a damn about. It makes something like pity twist in the depths of Matt's stomach, because he doesn't like to think of his friend grown so imperious and impervious that he believes his own lies when he swears _I don't care about anyone_, and _I don't need anything_, and _I'm going to beat Near, because all that matters is being the number one_. Mello, Matt thinks, is a beautiful disaster. And it makes something that definitely isn't pity twist in his gut, a strangely pleasant clench that is maybe more maddening than watching the light bounce off of Mello's hair.

_Every cloud has a silver lining_ and _every dog has his day_, but _every rose has its thorns_. Though Matt wants to ask and needs to know, he isn't sure it wouldn't be more prudent to leave things as they are. And Matt is suddenly terribly, terribly afraid.

Because he thinks maybe, just maybe, Mello might feel the same way.

Matt smiles a stretched-out smile that seems to come out all wrong, as though his facial muscles have forgotten how to cooperate with his brain.

"I… uh, I'm not sure I should," Matt croaks out pathetically, "not sure if I should actually tell you what I meant to. Originally." What an _idiotic _thing to say. Matt kind of wants to die. He'd like the bowels of the earth to open and swallow him whole, or to be able, for just one moment, to see inside of Mello's mind and know what he's thinking. And _then_ for the earth to swallow him whole, because Mello almost certainly thinks he's a moron now.

But Mello shakes his head, and gazes up at the ceiling in a beseeching mockery of prayer. When he looks back at Matt the blue eyes peeping out from under his fringe are devilish.

"In other words, you want me to beg you to spill whatever's on your mind." Mello crosses his arms. "So you have as your defense that 'I'm the one who wanted to know' and can't complain." The startled twitch Matt miserably attempts to conceal makes Mello amend, "But that's from your point of view. I'm not saying I'll have a problem. Just that you think so."

"Yeah." Matt shrugs eloquently. And then, because he really feels bad about dragging Mello down here only to lose his nerve, Matt offers, "I'll tell you some of it, though. If you promise to…"

Mello waits, but when no terms are forthcoming asks "Yes? What?"

Good question, Matt thinks. He hadn't planned what he was saying when he'd opened his mouth, and the words had tumbled out with a will of their own. Promise to what? He didn't know.

"To let me finish," he tacks on, after a second of scrabbling madly for something, anything to say. "Promise you'll let me finish," Matt repeats, testing out the words. They hold, and hang in the air, _another cliche_ because Matt's mind seems to be incapable of thinking without one, until Mello gestures incoherently and dispells them. He throws back his head, a shower of chopped golden hair falling, and snorts incredulously.

"All that, just because you wanted me to swear to shut up?" Mello's playing dumb, but he's also trying to lighten the mood, so Matt, silently grateful, doesn't call him on it.

Matt smiles nervously, staring determinedly at a spot on the wall several inches to the left of Mello's shoulder.

"Because you're probably not going to want to hear this. Because when you sit on the edge of you bed for half an hour brushing your hair, I think it looks really nice. You hair, I mean." And _oh god_ can't he come up with anything better than that? I like your _hair_? "And when I complain about the chocolate bars you leave all over the room. I don't really mind. I think they make it smell nice. But you always get so flustered, and it's, well it's," Matt stops abruptly and claps a hand over his mouth. Mello's eyes narrow a fraction, but his face otherwise betrays nothing.

And ohmygodOHmygod, Matt is thinking, I just thoughtofMelloascute and whathaveIdone? Eyes glazing over, he stares at him in blank horror. "You're not saying anything."

Mello just mouths back _I promised_.

And Matt knows Mello knows. Mello knows Matt knows it, too.

"Fuck," Matt whispers, and his other hand comes up to cover the rest of his face. "Fuck-fuck-fucking-fuck," he mumurs, the obscenity muffled through fingers and nearly inaudible.

"One of the few words that has legitimate colloquial usage as a verb, adverb, adjective, command, conjunction, exclamatory, noun and pronoun," Mello remarks conversationally, deciding Matt isn't going to say anything else and he can speak again. He reaches across to prize Matt's hands from his face. "And why are we using it?" Mello wraps his fingers around Matt's wrists and holds them at his sides, smirking lazily. "Thank you for the compliment, by the way."

Matt dies a little bit inside. He's so close, so very very close in more ways than one and he can't stand to be this close because it's tearing him to shreds not to be closer – and _what_ is he _thinking_ –

And Mello has an aquiline nose, and a muscle works in his jaw as Matt blinks slowly, stunned and dazed, and Mello's collarbones jut out and seem delicate, fragile, far-too-breakable to belong to someone who exudes _indestructable_ like him. And his fingers are cool but his shoulder is warm, because Matt presses his forehead to it and they stand there for a minute that drags like a leaf wafts to the ground, in slow motion and reluctant lurches. There is no rhythm to anything that they do, and there never has been, but in an awkward shuffle of sharp elbows they somehow end up with their noses inches away and Matt grabs Mello's hip and they both freeze, waiting.

Matt thought Mello would smell like chocolate, but he's up this close and all he can detect are faint traces of – strawberry? Mello watches him wrinkle his nose and can't help but shudder with mirth, because he's never seen Matt do that before, and as Mello shakes his hair swings forward and Matt realises it's Mello's shampoo. It's something so completely _Mello_ that Matt feels a welling up of affection, and it takes him by surprise. Matt sort of wants to run his hands through that cornflower-silk, to see if it's as smooth as it looks – his own hair is a haphazard array of uneven split ends, a red melee of tangles that Mello's always nagging him about – but Matt thinks that now really isn't the time, not quite yet.

"What're you thinking about?" Mello asks him, curious.

Feeling ridiculous, Matt closes his eyes and mumbles, "Your hair?"


End file.
